Growing indoors over the Winter (Part 1) ...

It has been soooo cold here that even my seeds in the south window aren't germinating! Yikes! Only the Sunspots germinated and is growing really slow. It must be the weather!

My yard is done. Everything got frost damage last night and anything that didn't get killed by the cold will be gone by tomorrow morning. Sheesh!

Just to show y'all how cold it is here in south-central Florida (zone 10a), here is my front yard fountain that I forgot to turn off last night. It was still running even though it was almost completely frozen on the surface of the water on all three tiers! Pretty funny, huh?! LOL! I think we are hitting close to record lows right now. Brrrr ...

The best part is hosing down the car windows in the morning to melt the ice. LOL! I am expecting snow next ... lol

Debra - Your I. plantesis looks great! I love all your new seedlings! :-)

Stay bundled up on your morning walkabout at the car lot! Gosh! I can't even imagine having to do that every morning! Brrrrrrrr ...

Nice set-up Woofie.

Verry healthy platensis seedling Debra.

Pretty fountain Becky.

Hello, I'm back again with one of my new crosses, which is ipomoea nil (early call pink x Akatsuki no umi). It's a lighter blue than Akatsuki no umi but it has a dainty white margin around the flower which is very odd. this one is sitting in my dorm at school.

Oh my, Becky! Heh, heh, that is a "cool" fountain! Neat picture; glad your fountain is ok.

Nice shade of blue, MGMan. I like the ones with the white margins. Looks like a nice healthy plant, too.

Great capture for the history books Becky!! LOL I guess our citrus prices will be sky high now...what the heck is going on with our weather?!

Wow! Have been thinking of starting MGs in the house and see that it can be done!!
Now just have to look for my seeds!! Thanks, great ideas!

Glad y'all got a big kick out of my frozen fountain. Temps are back up in the 70's again. Sheesh! But not before the numerous days of freezing nights killed the plants in my yard. (sigh) Hopefully most will come back from the roots.

MGMan - Nice blue bloom! Interesting cross. :-)

Ronnie - God only knows what is going on with the climate! I was expecting snow but looks like it has warmed up here considerably!

Welcome ladyslipper8744 to DG! I see that you just signed up a couple of weeks ago.

Ha ha! Ladyslipper doesn't know what she's gotten herself into! :-) Welcome to obsession!

This is my second tray of seedlings. Most are healthy seedlings and I'm quite happy with them.

Great pictures of your mg blooms Ronnie! Now I know what to expect from my Fuji No Monet, I was wondering why the stems looked so dark!!

Had to transplant some that had outgrown their pots and hang this net to keep my 3 year old grandson from messing with them!

Those look great Helena.

Helena,

Are some of those seedling from some of the strains I sent your way?

Did you have any difficulty sprouting any of them?

Looks like a nice crop you have going now, for sure.

Joseph

very very nice! I can't wait to see them grown out!

All looking great, got potting soild and large plastic cups, hopefully can get them started next week....

Helena - Your seedlings look great! They seem to like the grow light! I need to get on the ball here! Thanks for inspiring me to "Just do it!" :-)

Thanks everyone, the fun of growing for me has begun!!

Joseph 2 of those seedlings are from your Chocolate silk. The Kohkan didn't make it so I plan on trying again and the others too!

I'm thinking of putting all lavenders together, blues, pinks, purples but then I might run out of rooms. So I don't know, it just might turn mixed match.

Helena - How are you going to be growing these? Are they going into containers or the ground? And if in pots, how many per pot? Inquiring minds want to know ... :-)

Becky, I'm starting out wih just repotting each vine when they outgrow their pot into the next level size trying to avoid too big of a pot before I can set them outside in the end of March. It'll be a one mg each in a gallon pot for the regular mg's, I have bigger pots for the special mg's & it'll be just 1 mg in each pot. I'll probably have 3-5 pots with different lavender colors in one area & so on. At least that's what I'm going to try to do. Last year I put a couple mg's into the soil and they didn't get the water or attention they needed so they didn't do good. The ones in pots did much better. Anyway it's just a thought, I still have to wait till they bloom to make sure of the colors too! I tend to bite off more than I can chew and then I'm in trouble!

Helena - So you are going to group the MGs by color in your yard? If so, that's a neat idea.

I am thinking of doing a rainbow color grouping. I may have come up with an idea on how to display those white 5 gallon self-watering containers so they don't look like a total eye-sore. Not sure yet. I am experimenting and will post a photo when I am happy with my design experiment.

That's what I'm hoping to ry to do Becky.

Your idea sounds good too, it'll be really cool to see that!!

Finally got mine potted, I did put 3 per pot, large plastic cups....think they will have enough root space til I transplant outside, heard that they dont like to be disturbed much so will put all in pots in same hole with fertilizer and water well...
Days getting warmer here in MA....feels good!!

Becky, how high were the mg that you pinched back?? Mine comming up great!!

Becky, have you thought about maybe painting those containers with a paint that binds to plastic? That would be neat..

Or paint with glue and then roll in the sand.

I'd paint those white plastic buckets in rainbow colors to match the color of the MGs. I did that with coffee cans (they were the perfect size for a plant stand I have) and it looked pretty nice. I thought I had a picture, but can't find it.

woofie - I never thought about painting them the same color as perhaps the blooms! That WOULD look neat.

Dany - I never thought about glue and sand. What kind of glue would be best to use? If I used a water-soluable glue it would probably dissolve when we have rain. That's a neat idea too!

I painted some clay pots that I had primed first, but now the paint is flaking off of them. Grrrr ... I only painted them last year and expected the paint to last a lot longer than less than a year. :-( What a waste of my time and money!

ladyslipper - 3 seeds/vines per cup is a lot of plants in one cup. What will happen is that the strongest plant will thrive and the others will be dwarfed or possibly even die. Their root system will get pretty large and they will all be competing for nutrients and water and sunlight. I usually only sow one seed per cup.

This message was edited Mar 16, 2010 5:22 PM

I love that glue and sand idea, too. Dany, have you done this and do you have pictures? The nice thing about that idea is that you could still paint them if you wanted. That could add some interesting texture, particularly with neutral colors.

There is a paint that binds to anything and is water proof, my daughter gave me some paint pens so my tags would quit running .. I like that idea of the glue and sand, an epoxy would be what i would use to do that with. great Idea!

I'm watching the leaves on my new seedlings and this one from Joseph's Chocolate silk looks very interesting. It sems to have yellow in it!

The leaf variegation in that Chocolate Silk vine is incredible, Helena!

Thanks Joseph, I like them a lot. I'm looking forward to the blooms too!!

that is a way cool looking pattern on that!

Ok, bump - looks like you all had so much fun with this last winter - guess what I'm going to do this weekend :-)

Hi kmom246! Hmmm ... for some reason I thought we had a newer thread for indoor growing. But I don't see one, so ... glad you revived this thread! :-)

How are you going to be growing yours? In a sunny window or under lights?

I have grown vines during the winter on a sunny window shelf the past two years. This year, I may still do a little germinating on the sunny window shelf, but they will be grown under lights on a make-shift grow station.

I used an existing shelving unit and mounted lights to the top of two sections. Here is a photo taken today actually of my current grow-out of vines. I have 29 vines growing indoors under lights. I just potted them all up into 32 oz. styrofoam cups this past weekend, so they are kind of in shock from the transplant. But I am sure at this stage in their growth that they will probably start taking off soon! No buds yet, but hopefully that will happen very soon, too! Longest wait that I've ever had for blooms from Ipomoea nil vines. Not sure why. When I grew them on a sunny window shelf, they bloomed within 5 weeks. These were germinated on September 6th, so they are almost 8 weeks old and no sign of a single bud forming yet.

I will be pruning them when they get too tall, but for now they still have room to grow upward on the small trellises. Here is a close-up of the top shelf where there are 14 vines. These are all I. nils except one which is a species vine.

And this is the bottom shelf where I have 15 vines growing. 13 are I. nils and there are 2 species vines (one in each back corner of the shelf).

Becky, those look great! I moved my Stictocardia Brev. in and trimmed it, gave it the whole closet downstairs for constant temps, and now it has buds ..I keep finding "arms" creeping around the doorway, tho.. it wants out I think.

Debra - Your vine looks great! How big is it? I'd love to see a full photo of it! Was your SB grown from seed? Mine is getting pretty long. It germinated on Sept. 6th, so it is almost 8 weeks old. It is the plant in the far left in the back on the bottom shelf of my shelving unit. I wonder how many years it will take to get blooms on mine? I can hope for blooms in 2011, but I don't know if that is likely or not.

I'm glad this got a bump....I may try it this winter. ^_^